Dialogue-Ron & Ken
This continues a previous post 'The perils of distraction' - August 2014. I wanted Ken to clarify his position on distraction. He seemed to think it both ubiquitous and a constant.
K. Almost from the start people distract themselves from the inevitability of their own death.
Culture is itself a distraction...in the widest sense...any activity may be considered distracting, sometimes creative, sometimes not. Cultural artefacts may be seen as attempts to gain some form of immortality.
R. Distraction is a negative term.
K. I object to distraction when it is an unexamined avoidance of our finitude. For example, religious or faith based fervour seems to me to be an emotional avoidance of a rational or realist approach to the big questions.
R. Fundamentally you seem concerned about acknowledgement, of what?
K. Personal mortality.
R. If it were then what?
K. Plastic surgery out of business. A radical change in what we call narcissism. Potential for the individual who wants to be special and to tell others about that status, which is the basis of social networks, to revoke the omnipotent “I don’t want to be thought of as just another temporary being”
R. Why might acknowledging one’s mortality be incompatible with having facial features altered? Why does one rule out the other?
K. Distraction is pretending. As a culture we pretend that there are paths to immortality. Religion, or artistic creativity - so what I create will live after me, or I will have 10 children - thus guaranteeing immortality as my genes will spread etc. All of that is a denial of finitude and one’s insignificance in cosmic terms. Think of Brian Cox’s Human Universe where he demonstrates the unimaginable dimensions of space and time.
R. I do not get that. I do not know why almost the reverse could not be true. It might be precisely because of one’s finitude that I am going to have 10 children.
K. But that is different because that is acknowledging it, acknowledging one’s finitude.
R. There is a shift then. What you are saying is not that everything is a distraction but that if people are in denial of their mortality then they seek distraction.
I am not even sure about that. Because I am not sure what they are avoiding. And what difference it makes.
K. I think they are avoiding terror.
R. Terror?
K. Terror, fear of their own death.
R. I think that there is here something that is almost impossible to think about. You seem to be saying this is what people ought to be doing. You make it seem like a moral wrong. But I do not really know what difference acknowledging it or not makes.
Also I am not sure what acknowledging it quite means. I am not sure what precisely is acknowledged, or is to be acknowledged. It is not just the thought I am going to die. It must be more than that. Everybody knows that.
K. They might know in a cognitive sense. But they often don’t accept it at an emotional level.
R. What do you mean by that? I am not sure what is not accepted. Conversely were one to accept that I am not sure what difference that makes.
K. If someone accepts it both at emotional and cognitive levels - that their life is finite - then they can either sink into a deep depression, because there is no point in anything, or become active in something that is not grandiose.
R. Why is there no point in anything.
K. Because they could be dead tomorrow.
R. But why does that make for no point?
K. Because in order to create something you have to plan, and in order to plan you have to look ahead, and if there is not time enough then there is no point in doing anything. So If someone thinks there is no point or no significance to human life anyway then he can easily sink into a depression or he can say, as most do, while I have life there is hope.
I want to go back to something else. To the march in Paris, the march against the terrorists or against terror. I think that march symbolised acknowledgment. They said we are not going to pretend it does not exist. We could be shot because that is what happened to others. It is an acknowledgement of vulnerability, of mortality. Instead of going to the movies, they decided to walk in large numbers. That is interesting to me in terms of terror. They were acknowledging terror. That is what distraction is about at an individual level. I think that people distract themselves because they are terribly frightened of their demise and what follows from their demise is their insignificance. We are essentially roadkill. There is a machine on the road that does not care about us at all, and it is called death. And because we get terribly frightened we say, I don’t want to think about it, so I will distract myself. I shall visit the grandchildren, do a new painting, I will go the movies or go shopping, because I don’t want to think about it. And if someone says, why don’t you want to think about it, the answer is “It is too awful!”
R. You are a pessimist. I guess what you are saying is that life is terrible or there is constant terror.
K. Fatalistic is closer to what I mean than pessimistic.
R. Fatalism that has a bearing on options in life. The image you have of this road machine is a terrifying one. You suggest that people may try to avoid this machine but they can’t. Your position does denigrate culture. One has spent all those years creating beautiful stained glass windows and there is the machine.
In this conversation I am reminded of the Socratic injunction - ’the unexamined life is not worth living’ If one wants to live a valuable life then one has to examine oneself and examine one’s values and one can’t do that without taking into account one’s own mortality.
K. If someone is not prepared to think about their own death, their
own non being then they are suffering under an illusion, and it is an illusion to do with continuation. And that is false.
So the consequence of each position is what really matters.
R. So you think that someone not acknowledging their mortality is under the illusion that they will last forever.
K. Yes, and the consequence of that is that they are very likely to become more narcissistic because they think of themselves as special, they are like the soldier who goes into battle thinking that my friends might get killed but I won’t. It is that illusion I am referring to, the illusion of immortality of some kind. We reward it in battle. The narcissist sees himself as special and that is in the line of immortality. If somebody does not acknowledge their own mortality they are much more likely to be grandiose and if they have a scheme that attempts to advance themselves over others and it fails they suffer humiliation. And that is the worst thing that can happen to a narcissist. Whereas someone who is not narcissistic and not under the illusion of immortality in some form, is much more likely to be humble and therefore is not going to be grandiose but that does not mean he can’t be productive or creative or imaginative etc. Let’s take one example from culture. The film, the movie, sometimes someone can go to a movie because they do not want to think about anything else like their cat has died or something else that is unpleasant, and thus they seek distraction. Someone else might go to the movie and think I am going to this because I think it might be an enriching experience. It is the same movie but different attitudes are brought to it.
R. To be continued…...
This continues a previous post 'The perils of distraction' - August 2014. I wanted Ken to clarify his position on distraction. He seemed to think it both ubiquitous and a constant.
K. Almost from the start people distract themselves from the inevitability of their own death.
Culture is itself a distraction...in the widest sense...any activity may be considered distracting, sometimes creative, sometimes not. Cultural artefacts may be seen as attempts to gain some form of immortality.
R. Distraction is a negative term.
K. I object to distraction when it is an unexamined avoidance of our finitude. For example, religious or faith based fervour seems to me to be an emotional avoidance of a rational or realist approach to the big questions.
R. Fundamentally you seem concerned about acknowledgement, of what?
K. Personal mortality.
R. If it were then what?
K. Plastic surgery out of business. A radical change in what we call narcissism. Potential for the individual who wants to be special and to tell others about that status, which is the basis of social networks, to revoke the omnipotent “I don’t want to be thought of as just another temporary being”
R. Why might acknowledging one’s mortality be incompatible with having facial features altered? Why does one rule out the other?
K. Distraction is pretending. As a culture we pretend that there are paths to immortality. Religion, or artistic creativity - so what I create will live after me, or I will have 10 children - thus guaranteeing immortality as my genes will spread etc. All of that is a denial of finitude and one’s insignificance in cosmic terms. Think of Brian Cox’s Human Universe where he demonstrates the unimaginable dimensions of space and time.
R. I do not get that. I do not know why almost the reverse could not be true. It might be precisely because of one’s finitude that I am going to have 10 children.
K. But that is different because that is acknowledging it, acknowledging one’s finitude.
R. There is a shift then. What you are saying is not that everything is a distraction but that if people are in denial of their mortality then they seek distraction.
I am not even sure about that. Because I am not sure what they are avoiding. And what difference it makes.
K. I think they are avoiding terror.
R. Terror?
K. Terror, fear of their own death.
R. I think that there is here something that is almost impossible to think about. You seem to be saying this is what people ought to be doing. You make it seem like a moral wrong. But I do not really know what difference acknowledging it or not makes.
Also I am not sure what acknowledging it quite means. I am not sure what precisely is acknowledged, or is to be acknowledged. It is not just the thought I am going to die. It must be more than that. Everybody knows that.
K. They might know in a cognitive sense. But they often don’t accept it at an emotional level.
R. What do you mean by that? I am not sure what is not accepted. Conversely were one to accept that I am not sure what difference that makes.
K. If someone accepts it both at emotional and cognitive levels - that their life is finite - then they can either sink into a deep depression, because there is no point in anything, or become active in something that is not grandiose.
R. Why is there no point in anything.
K. Because they could be dead tomorrow.
R. But why does that make for no point?
K. Because in order to create something you have to plan, and in order to plan you have to look ahead, and if there is not time enough then there is no point in doing anything. So If someone thinks there is no point or no significance to human life anyway then he can easily sink into a depression or he can say, as most do, while I have life there is hope.
I want to go back to something else. To the march in Paris, the march against the terrorists or against terror. I think that march symbolised acknowledgment. They said we are not going to pretend it does not exist. We could be shot because that is what happened to others. It is an acknowledgement of vulnerability, of mortality. Instead of going to the movies, they decided to walk in large numbers. That is interesting to me in terms of terror. They were acknowledging terror. That is what distraction is about at an individual level. I think that people distract themselves because they are terribly frightened of their demise and what follows from their demise is their insignificance. We are essentially roadkill. There is a machine on the road that does not care about us at all, and it is called death. And because we get terribly frightened we say, I don’t want to think about it, so I will distract myself. I shall visit the grandchildren, do a new painting, I will go the movies or go shopping, because I don’t want to think about it. And if someone says, why don’t you want to think about it, the answer is “It is too awful!”
R. You are a pessimist. I guess what you are saying is that life is terrible or there is constant terror.
K. Fatalistic is closer to what I mean than pessimistic.
R. Fatalism that has a bearing on options in life. The image you have of this road machine is a terrifying one. You suggest that people may try to avoid this machine but they can’t. Your position does denigrate culture. One has spent all those years creating beautiful stained glass windows and there is the machine.
In this conversation I am reminded of the Socratic injunction - ’the unexamined life is not worth living’ If one wants to live a valuable life then one has to examine oneself and examine one’s values and one can’t do that without taking into account one’s own mortality.
K. If someone is not prepared to think about their own death, their
own non being then they are suffering under an illusion, and it is an illusion to do with continuation. And that is false.
So the consequence of each position is what really matters.
R. So you think that someone not acknowledging their mortality is under the illusion that they will last forever.
K. Yes, and the consequence of that is that they are very likely to become more narcissistic because they think of themselves as special, they are like the soldier who goes into battle thinking that my friends might get killed but I won’t. It is that illusion I am referring to, the illusion of immortality of some kind. We reward it in battle. The narcissist sees himself as special and that is in the line of immortality. If somebody does not acknowledge their own mortality they are much more likely to be grandiose and if they have a scheme that attempts to advance themselves over others and it fails they suffer humiliation. And that is the worst thing that can happen to a narcissist. Whereas someone who is not narcissistic and not under the illusion of immortality in some form, is much more likely to be humble and therefore is not going to be grandiose but that does not mean he can’t be productive or creative or imaginative etc. Let’s take one example from culture. The film, the movie, sometimes someone can go to a movie because they do not want to think about anything else like their cat has died or something else that is unpleasant, and thus they seek distraction. Someone else might go to the movie and think I am going to this because I think it might be an enriching experience. It is the same movie but different attitudes are brought to it.
R. To be continued…...
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